Like a bank, it must care about its dignity and an image for stability because of its intimate relationship of trust with its 845 million members, who know their unparalleled cache of personal information is about to turn Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg into a billionaire 24 times over.

So far, Mr. Zuckerberg and colleagues have been more cautious in exploiting customer data than they get credit for. But let us be frank: There is no way the company can grow into such a gargantuan market value by adding even hundreds of millions of new members if it continues to extract only $1 in profit per year per user.

ADDED: In evaluating the worth of Facebook, can we take their judgment in interior design into account?

That is Facebook's own photo, so they are not ashamed to go out into the world looking like that. Disturbing! Those paper lanterns projecting out into the doorway or stuck back behind a trashcan and a rolling chair. The diagonal stripes on the carpet and continuing — miniaturized and de-diagonalized — on one wall. The horrid clock as the only thing hanging on the wall. I couldn't work in an environment like that, and yet the 2 individuals sitting on that crappy brown sectional couch are both billionaires. And they are billionaires in the business of creating something that will occupy the visual field of hundreds of millions of human beings. Something is terribly wrong!

What the hell is the attraction of Facebook again? First time I went there a few years ago, it was a front page followed by some picture pages and then some comment pages, and I said, "that's all it does??" And I could go there today and say "that's all it does??"

Where there is any income from such a site, much less income sufficient to justify a website value in the hundreds of millions if not billions, is beyond me.

What does Facebook do? It collects detailed personal information on hundreds of millions of people into a massive, mineable form. It now has the problem, described in the article of needing to but not being able to monetize what it has.

Sounds like the stuff that Mitt Romney really did in his day job. Obtain something, pump it up with a lot of air, inflate it's paper worth so people think that there is something there, move the ball around a few times so no one can really connect all the dots, and then sell.

People don't understand what Romney did, and he's not that great at explaining it. He's going to need to be.

I'd like to think that he took companies that had value, worked them into shape where they could go forward profitably, and deserved to be paid for what was done to them. If that's not true it's bad. It needs to both be true and be convincingly explainable as true. What are the odds?!

What does Facebook do? It collects detailed personal information on hundreds of millions of people into a massive, mineable form.

Yeah, like I said, for the user, for the customer, "OK, then what? So you got my name, I've created this personal page, then what? What the hell do I do with it? Yeah, I can 'friend' people, then what? I can post a comment on their page and look at their pics and they can do the same, then what?" To quote Joe Bite-me, "BFD."

"I didn’t know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time I would never say the people on it are losers, but that’s only because I’m polite."

There are buttons everywhere--phones, computers, remote controls--whose use and functionality I do not understand. Their only purpose seems to be to remind me of my stupidity. I can't pass any informed opinion on Facebook, but a lot of this tech stuff reminds me of the hit music in my youth. There was a big difference between the Beatles and Herman's Hermits, but if you were there at their beginnings, it was not so easy to differentiate their relative merits. Maybe Facebook is this generation's AOL and will fade by sunset. Maybe it's Amazon and will continue to build on successful business model....I hate all billionaires under the age of 30, and I certainly hope this enterprise crashes.

i use facebook, and the service it provides is both real and important.

i have close personal friends that moved away for various reasons. if i want to stay involved with them i have to put effort into maintaining the relationship, right? if i have 5 friends and 20 family members, sending them pictures and emails on an individual basis is very time-consuming. pictures and emails i send to old drinking buddies are going to be very different from pictures and emails i send to my mother.

facebook allows me to put all this information into one spot, set and easy privacy tags, and voila. everybody sees what they need to see in near real time.

i get to watch, in pictures and text, my brother's triplet teenage girls start to discover boys. i get to watch, in text, pictures, and video, a buddy remodel an old philly townhouse.

this could all be done in other ways, but facebook makes it much, much easier. as a consequence of being very easy, a lot more of it gets done.

And the only way for Facebook to continue to convince it is worth that much is for it to go on the absurd over-the-top advertising blitz of myspace, in which advertisers basically took over the landscape.

If Althouse isn't really sure what Romney did he could be in bad trouble.

No he isn't. Our dear professor, whom we really do love, is merely so concerned. After having somewhat reluctantly voted for a guy whose wrecking the country, in an election where all the candidates were lousy, and regretting it, she is now desperate to replace him. Problem is that, like last time, all of the candidates are crap. But she is desperate, desperate to not see the nation as a whole also become crap.

So, in her desperation, she is clinging to the thinest of threads and flimsiest of arguments, ignoring all the bad, to support Romney. She hopes against hope that Mitt will be the guy to save us. Because if he isn't, she reasons, then we're really f***ed.

She's not alone. So, Romney is not really in bad trouble. People will support him and vote for him regardless, because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Also, Facebook is just like so much of the internet. It works precisely because it provides a forum for shallow interactions and personal news spreading. Right now it has this huge, huge momentum because it has such a wide user base, people will put up with a lot before they turn elsewhere.

But, ultimately, people just want the forum, not to be monetized. It's a fine line, and, honestly, an open source version of Facebook could easily pop up and then start taking over if Facebook becomes too obviously money grubbing.

If you don't care enough about someone to send them personal emails or letters or contact them in other ways then you don't really care about them at all. Facebook is for people who care about looking like they care when they actually don't care much at all. In other words, social functions, which are valueless as far as I'm concerned.

There are buttons everywhere--phones, computers, remote controls--whose use and functionality I do not understand. Their only purpose seems to be to remind me of my stupidity.

don't beat yourself up, compadre. Software and hardware are designed by techies who know most of the feature they build in won't be used by most people and a lot of them won't even be used by power users.

They put them in just in case somebody might need it (or because some project manager (I had one like this) bucking for promotion can run to management and say, "This was MY idea").

And rcommal is right. Lots of people love it, plenty don't want to get caught in the morass.

Now we're supposed to follow the advice of a gal who proudly owns plastic countertops, ridiculously lame cabinet knobs, a table that looks like source material for Ikea, an electronic desk, pre-kindle clutter, and a painting that can only be appreciated if you're connected to the creator.

If you don't care enough about someone to send them personal emails or letters or contact them in other ways then you don't really care about them at all. Facebook is for people who care about looking like they care when they actually don't care much at all.

Zuckerberg should share his billions with all Facebook members. He should be paying them money for putting out all their information because however benign they think it is, others will use it and make profit off of it. Members who think they are benefiting from it are disproportionally served by it.

Many of these features were available on AOL, from the time it was still America On-Line. Personal boards, group boards, chat rooms, etc.

All the benefits of personal interaction without having to deal with real people -- kind of like it is here in the comboxes!

AOL even had those chat rooms where you could go in and have a cyber-sex orgy with everyone. People typing in "oh, baby, mmmm, uhhhnnn, ohhh," with one hand and yanking it with the other. Ah, how great is the sexual revolution?

I feel like I'm swimming against the tide alot lately but I'll weigh in on the pros of Facebook with a caveat.

I use it, I like, lots of family, friends, and acquaintances use it. Great way to share pictures and videos (I'm aware there are lots of other ways to share those as well). I have reconnected with people from my past in ways that are satisfying and enriching to both of us.

That said, my involvement with it has declined, as has many of my FB friends. I know the party line from FB is that they are being forced to go public or start publishing their financials anyways, but I get the feeling that adoption is leveling off. They are going to sell high while the getting is good. I'm not saying it will bomb, but they are going to have to be creative about future revenue streams. I doubt they'll be able to grow in double-digit percentages year over year with their current business model.

[rephrasing my previous comment for clarity]Imagine if Ann becomes a billionaire just because people like you and me comment here and we don't get a penny of it. Sure, some commenters think they are popular and deceive themselves thinking they have some power of persuasion over others and blah, blah and get some satisfaction that way but really -- does Ann deserve to milk billions out of our presence? Where is the proportion?

Ann, one of the things I dislike about Romney is his ability to complicate answers to questions like "What did you have for breakfast today?"

That said, do you think he's being intentionally vague when asked about his past business practices? His knowledge of such is his hard-earned intellectual property, and the basis of his personal fortune. He might not want to give it up so easily, even if just out of allegiance to his peers at Bain and any other company he's a board member of.

Seems that envy and jealously are alive and well. Zuckerberg is only 27 and about to become top 10 richest man in the world. That has to cause even multi-billionares like Bill Gates some consternation. On top of all that, he's a JEW.

When you're a start up business you have crummy offices and furniture. You take what you can get for as little expense as you can manage. You don't buy anything that isn't directly related to delivering your product or service to the customer. Their offices look exactly like I'd expect them to look if that company is well managed.

Now, if after their IPO they really do draw in billions and they're swimming in money, the image they present will become more important. If they're in crummy offices 2 years from now that will be different.

But in the end, is Facebook really essential to our society? Could we live without them? I say yeah we could just fine. But we couldn't live without the big infrastructure companies like Oracle, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, SAP, Applied Materials, BASF and so on. Those companies are the bedrock for people like Zuckerberg to build an expensive toy(Facebook) upon.

I am very familiar with several PE deals. In one case, the owners were paid millions for their business and the PE firm provided them with the resources to expand by 1,000%. Think about that - they went from six stores to 66 and not a single person lost his job! Do you think that created even more jobs? Do you think this is immoral or unethical? Did a lot of people make a lot of money? Do you think they spent that money on buying stuff from builders, car dealers, race horses, etc or did they stuff it in their mattresses?

All I can see is that Barnum was right.Barnum did not said that. People in facebook did not gave money, not in cash anyway.As Mises put it , consumers are fools but it is not to businessperson to tell them that but to serve them.Philosphers ,artists and leaders have the task of critizicing them

As far as I'm aware, I've never paid a dime to Zuckerberg's company. $1 profit per person is $845 million EBITA per year. That's not fucking bad for a glorified Web 2.0 company. Who says every company can be like Apple making $13 billion EBITA per quarter?

I don't expect Facebook will collapse as MySpace did. It's not entirely narcissistic and it doesn't have to be entirely annoying. My heart sank a little to see my older brother playing Farmville, presumably to stay online there and stay in contact if even through the contrivance of that game. Still, for the utility it provides there is no escaping the nagging truth that on Facebook the user is the product.

I like my family better not talking to them everyday. * looks around * Don't tell anybody I said this because it's quite rude and it might get me in trouble, but, my nephews and nieces are vapid little dipshits. They are all much more interesting when I see them in person and fairly rarely.

So we can just resume our regular contact of forwarding unoriginal material.

I don't think Facebook is a passing fad at all. People...people who need people...may be sappy but it's a universal need. Which can only be satisfied by keeping in contact. Which Facebook facilitates. There doesn't have to be substance. The substance is company.

I don't buy the "FB is shallow" meme really. If you are trying to be involved in your lives of people when they live 2000 miles away away, the sum total of all that shallowness adds up to a relationship. Not perfect, but it's a relationship.

My objection is to the sharing of info with marketers or the government.

PatCA - I'm shocked at how many people just don't care about how blitely Facebook treats their private info. Technologically the site is a marvel, but I want bullet proof security on it before I would consider using it more extensively.

In which thread it is again demonstrated that the financial acumen of even smart people is all but nil. Go to sec.gov and retreive the S1 for Facebook and read it. You will understand some but not much of it. Before the IPO the S1 will be updated and you will learn a bit more cin this way you can begin to gain some financial literacy.

The " greed" of Facebook and its bankers will be tested by the ipo. If the stock does not rise it has been overpriced. If it rises dramatically it has been underpriced. The bankers and Facebook want it to be just right. The company wants to go public fairly soon so that the lockout will expire before tax rates rise at the end of the year. Lots of stock held by employees will be sold at that time so be alert to that.

Facebook itself has not touched China yet. The S1 suggests that the growth of the company has slowed somewhat so valuation is tricky. It appears that most here are unfamiliar with FB, its purpose and why it has so many users. You may be right. You may also be cranking up your Apple product which you scoffed at not long ago.

The marketing data potential for FB is immense. I'm not sure how they capitalize on it, but they could rival Google for ad revenue eventually. They have almost a billion users, all of whom post all sorts of personal info that can aggregated and mined. It's a marketer's dream.

Michael, good info, and I have to say I'm having a hard time seeing the potential for FB in China. They're pretty internet-phobic, and FB is just the sort of democratizing, free-info-exchange type of site that scares the hell out of the Chinese Politburo. They can't control FB, so they won't let it in. At least in its current incarnation.

"If you don't care enough about someone to send them personal emails or letters or contact them in other ways then you don't really care about them at all. Facebook is for people who care about looking like they care when they actually don't care much at all. "

Ahh, so you can see into my soul now?

Shouldn't I get some kind of notification when that happens? </silly facebook joke>

That is Facebook's own photo, so they are not ashamed to go out into the world looking like that. Disturbing! Those paper lanterns projecting out into the doorway or stuck back behind a trashcan and a rolling chair. The diagonal stripes on the carpet and continuing — miniaturized and de-diagonalized — on one wall. The horrid clock as the only thing hanging on the wall. I couldn't work in an environment like that, and yet the 2 individuals sitting on that crappy brown sectional couch are both billionaires. And they are billionaires in the business of creating something that will occupy the visual field of hundreds of millions of human beings. Something is terribly wrong!

If you really cared about people, you'd hitch up the horses and go visiting.

Facebook is excellent for keeping in touch with people you wouldn't otherwise. I'm not going to exchange email with 200 old schoolmates, but I am curious about what they're up to. I like seeing pictures of their cute children and reading about their current interests. Facebook is ideal for that.

Plus, there is no better place to observe the decline of civilization.

FreemanHunt. I think you have it right. It is always interesting as well to see the webs of friendships and the interaction of generations. This kind of social media could well serve to pull us back from the brink

People who take linkedin and facebook seriously deserve to suffer serious career damage. Social networks are bully networks for social retards. If a bully decides to complain, the social networks panic and censor you but if you fight back, they automatically get bullied themselves. They are brought to you by aghadhimmics whose patron saint was Walt Whitman, the guy who only had sex with himself and believed in the Gnostic Gospels. Those who use lint tin and futz book are narcissist masochist clowns governed by affectation. Is a vulture capitalist who only invests in firms which appear as friends of friends really exercising the fiduciary responsibility he is paid for? Do we forget a quarter century ago these banksters patted themselves on the back that firing Steve Jobs was the right thing to do? Or when Gerry Carmen's GSA foisted IBM mainframes on everyone in the government just as the PC and interactive computing were dawning? The same nuts who consider it modern to make emailing a symptom to your doctor into a HIPAA violation. Or when they relied on the witchcraft of technical analysis instead of the hard work of market fundamental, stealing instead of inventing even that, and concentrating more on the imitation than substance, causing the markets to crash? Or banksters who shell game inconsistent products, shifting fees and agreements by surprise, because their autopilot brains were unable to comprehend what real service is? How can you trust people who submit to affectations instead of genuine reality? Given how such fads ran amok in the recent crisis, such individuals should be denied serious employment in the future. Social networking is a bully bubble that needs to be shut down before it bankrupts all of us. That’s why all the idiot hedge funds donated to Obama!